As tools for sharing video files become more widely available, there has been a resulting increase in the amount of multimedia content available on the Internet. People now face a new challenge of viewing large amounts of multimedia content.
Further, using video files, people can share complex or voluminous data (e.g., a demonstration of software, a talk or an event). In enterprises, more and more of the meetings and presentations are being recorded and made available online on an Intranet or the Internet. Since video files, are large in size (e.g., ranging from megabytes to gigabytes for compressed formats), storing, sharing, and searching the video data brings new challenges in terms of cost, space, and time to enterprises.
In general, there are three main ways of sharing videos:
1. Video sharing systems (e.g., YouTube™, service available from YouTube LLC, San Bruno, Calif.): In this case, the time cost is mainly associated with the upload time for the video. The space cost is limited to one copy of the file. Uploading puts a burden on the enterprise network bandwidth, also there is a cost of building or buying a secure and efficient video sharing system within the enterprise.
2. File sharing systems (e.g., Cattail™, service available from IBM Corporation, Armonk, N.Y.): In this case, both upload and download times are incurred in the time cost. The space cost is limited to one copy of the file unless downloaders keep the copy of the video file in their personal computer/mobile device. This system puts a burden on the network due to the upload and multiple downloads (one for each viewer), and there is the cost of building or buying a secure and efficient file sharing system.
3. Email attachment: In this case, both upload and download times are incurred; the space cost will be multiplied by the number of people on the “send-to:” list. This way of sharing a video puts burden on the enterprise network bandwidth since the emails are delivered to each recipient's mail box, and later another burden is inflicted when the receiver starts downloading a copy to their personal computer/mobile device. There will be extra costs if the enterprise is outsourcing the email service and paying for the storage.
In addition to costs of time, bandwidth and storage, a greater problem is introduced when a video is shared via email; the problem being that the person receiving the link has no way of identifying whether the video is of interest to them or not.